A 25-day expedition by Australia's Marine National Facility led to a non-discovery of sorts --- with the marine scientists finding that an island called the Sandy Island, believed to be located in the Coral Sea off Australia, actually does not exist at all!

The disclosure about the non-existent Pacific island by the Australian marine scientists - led by Sydney university geologist Maria Seaton - came after the scientists found that the tantalizing island which should have been along their route, during their voyage for studying plate tectonics, "doesn't actually exist."

The non-discovery of the Sandy Island came as a shock to the marine scientists - who were aboard Marine National Facility's RV Southern Surveyor research vessel - because the world's maps have been featuring the island for more than ten years.

Moreover, when viewed from Google Earth, the Sandy Island looks like a dark, enigmatic piece of land situated in the midst of the shimmering expanse of the Pacific Ocean!

With reference to the non-discovery of thee Sandy Island, Danny Dorling - president of the British Society of Cartographers - said on Thursday that the `existence' of the Sandy Island on the world's maps for years underscored that some error had evidently crept in.

Further adding that it is next to impossible to create a "perfect map" of the world, Dorling said: "Our current world map is a collection of highly accurate satellite maps and some of the oldest data collected from Admiralty charts."